An Ironman, by any other name…-by Atul Singh

An Ironman, by any other name…

would screw your happiness just as much! 

Especially on Race Day. 

Which normal human being chooses to wake up 3 am, drink a protein shake that he made ready last night, use bathroom, get dressed, put a timing chip on, make another beetroot shake, use bathroom again and head out by 4 am to secure his place in the closest parking lot by a cold and vast lake, where he plans to jump in, and swim non-stop for 2.4 miles shortly thereafter. Hahn? 

If this is not madness, try jumping on the bike as soon you come out of the water, wet and all, and keep biking away for 112 miles straight and over 5000 ft of elevation gain, from nowhere to nowhere in a hurry, eating and drinking on the bike itself, so as not to lose time in the rush to reach exactly where you started from. 

If that was the end of the story, a confinement to save others from you would make sense. But the reason I recommend a padded cell is that as soon as you got off the bike belching and nauseated after consuming food bars and gels over the last several hours, you rush to start running a full marathon of 26.2 miles, except that your nauseated, convulsing body isn’t enjoying the sloshing around of crap in the belly. The body had long ago shut out the digestive process due to energy demands that the limbs were posing on it. So the food just sat there compounding your misery of the run. 

So you run/walked the whole marathon distance and 1400 feet elevation for the glory of it all. You wanted to know that you could do it. You wanted to be called an Ironman. So glorious. So fucking glorious, isn’t it?

Well that’s my story, perhaps similar to that of many others on Sunday Aug 20th 2023,  during Mont Tremblant Ironman. But the story did not start there.

It started about ten months ago when on a whim and a fancy, a moderately trained athlete(me), made a decision to be part of something big and bold. An Ironman was it. I had done one in 2012 and even though the memories of pain had faded away, the joy of success and achievement, of getting out to do something difficult and seeing it through had somehow survived. I do not remember the swim from 2012 race except for the moment of jumping in Hudson river in the wee hours of that early morning. I remember some random moments on the bike when a woman bicyclist had burst out singing New York, New York and an incident on the run when I had helped someone through a dark time and then fifteen miles later got helped by someone else in my own dark time. 

It took six months of 10 hours a week to build the courage to show up at the starting line of Mont Tremblant Ironman 2023. Physical strength wise, many people will conjure up enough of it, to see an Ironman through, if their loved one was on the other side of it. But building the courage to show up for the fun of it takes time. It takes hours on the bike and in the pool, to feel ready and believe that you deserve to show up amongst these incredible athletes. The Ironman environment is where some of the finest physical samples of humanity compete for achievement or to numb some pain or to assert the fullness of who they are. They express it with this unique combination of mind and body playing out across the vast expanse of water and roads and hills. These athletes want to leave the last bit of themselves there on roads and in the lakes where they compete. The entire cities get blocked out for all but them, for that day. The athletes want to pay back in gratitude with their blood, sweat and tears on these courses and these trails. It’s hard to understand untill you see them. Then it all falls in place. They are there to know that they count and they work their butts off and then some for just that feeling. 

In that arduos process, each sigh on seeing the next hill gets mingled in the rustle of tree leaves, which they want to leave there for ever and ever. Each splash of their tired arms in the lake, seeking the next yard, gets immersed in the soft splish-splash of waves around them to permanently become part of that lake. They will take the experience away but leave memories behind, perhaps to revisit some point in future. They want to permanently become part of the arena where this glorious game of fortitude and humility plays out.

Their is no glory really wothout knowing that a wrong moment on the bike, another eager swimmer’s innocent arm or a twist of the ankle can shut the whole race down for you in a nano second, as it did for a couple of my fellow warriors in Mont Tremblant. In other races folks have died too, especially in the swim section. So to do it, to be in that environment, to see it through, to feel accomplished are all such incredible blessings if we just know how to count them. 

No one shuts down a city willy-nilly. No one hands you a course to conquer across hundreds of miles willy-nilly. Yet, The Ironman Foundation and the City of Mont Tremblant and thousands of volunteers did it did it for us. For me!

I may be the most awestruck Ironman ever. But not because I pretend to be. I just know, that I know, that I know, that it was indeed a huge privilege to be with my fellow warriors on that difficult course and also to have been supported by friends and family as I was through it all. 

Thank you again, Ironman Foundation, volunteers, city of Mont Tremblant, fellow athletes, friends and family who supported my journey, to feel counted. 

I am an Ironman, one more time.